Look how many options there are to consider – HDTV, Satellite, DVD+-R, PC interface, and VCD burning… dumb PVR recording… Pick the best options and run with them, and don’t try to pull an “Apple” on your hacker community.

I have a beef- where’s the Canadian service? They’ve got a prime market of 30 million people (10% of the N. American English-speaking market…), NTSC, same channels in many cases. I don’t understand why this market is ignored – especially when they were in the UK market. I’m tired of the stock answer “We are considering it…”

HDTV is still in early adoption, but a lot of the TIVO owners I know are also early adopters, and the inability to have a solution will hurt.

Bigger problem is lack of dual tuners. Goes back to the cost of the hardware. TIVO hardware is much cheaper than equivalent Media Center PC. How cheap can you make the dual-tuner models? $99 is an excellent price point, but will be hard to maintain with higher specs to handle HDTV / dual-tuners / cablecard.

Also, TIVO needs to develop a better hardware upgrade path. Both financial (turn in your old boxes for a rebate, thus preventing a glut of older models) but also though transferring your ratings and seasons passes to new boxes. You could easily turn this into a new revenue stream. With 3 millions users, some of them are going to want new boxes at some point.

HME is nice, and does outsource some development costs, but the company has shown a real inability to develop other revenue streams outside monthly fee. Downloading movies will not be a market for the next five years. Need to tie HME into the TV more (buy the items featured on this cooking show. Buy the book mentioned on this show. Buy the music on SNL). Also tie into IMDB and other information, but in the main TV screen, rather than in separate HME apps. Little evidence company can pull this off. They focus too much on the monthly fee and defending that fee.

Also need to push the limits on suggestions and other data mining opportunities. Quantify that info and post it daily (what is the most Tivoed moment of the day? of the week? Enormous PR from this.

I eagerly await the HD cabable cable card machines, though. Maybe then I’ll get into HD cable. ‘Til then, I am not bothering.

http://www.tivo.com/2.0.1.asp

DirecTiVo units start at $99 MSRP, but are often less with promotions.

Which is sheer ignorance. They have a test case in progress against Echostar, and it seems like a strong case. There is absolutely no point in wasting money on lawyers trying to sue other parties at this time. It is better to go through the test case. If TiVo wins then many other companies will probably license their patents without a fight simply to avoid the trouble and cost of being sued. And those who don’t will have a tougher time fighting TiVo in court with the patents already having been upheld.

They have over 70 patents already, and more to come. Patents are useful things. In addition to pursuing licensing revenue, they can also be used defensively. Others also have patents, and if one of them came after TiVo they may be able to settle it with a patent swap instead of paying out. Which is what TiVo did with ReplayTV.

But I agree, the doom and gloom stuff is getting really stale.